Border Angels Page 14

  “No,” said Boyd. “Not at all.”

  Owen Higgins leaned back in his seat. “Disappearances are a notorious border crime. During the Troubles we had many instances of men and women going missing. Usually they were branded as informers. In those days, proper searches were seldom conducted. It doesn’t surprise me to see a similar nonchalance at work in the police today.”

  “Exactly,” said Mooney. “People just don’t vanish off the face of the earth because it’s South Armagh. When and where was the last sighting of Lena Novak?”

  “Why are you so interested in this woman?” asked Daly.

  Neither Mooney nor Higgins answered.

  “What is it you’re trying to find out here?” continued Daly. “The whereabouts of your missing peace funds?”

  Boyd butted in. “Mr. Mooney, you should know that we can’t reveal the details of an ongoing investigation.”

  “I’m just concerned that people traffickers and pimps are operating freely under the cover of police indifference.”

  One of the more moderate politicians, a representative of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, submitted a question. “Only a few years ago, South Armagh was a constant center of bloodshed and murder,” she said. “Now we learn from the media that it’s the focus for international criminal gangs. What exactly are the police doing to tackle the problem of people trafficking and is it true that these gangs have teamed up with former IRA men?”

  Mooney shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He hunched his shoulders, drummed his fingers on the tabletop, and leaned over and whispered to Brooke. Daly caught his gaze and saw a pair of worried eyes flash back at him. Or was that just his imagination? The former terrorist and close friend of Jack Fowler looked anxious to get back to his heavily mortgaged, stinking concrete cell. Was it because, a decade ago, Mooney would have been one of the dark shadows from the terrorist underworld they were discussing? Daly watched him with curiosity.

  “That’s a good question,” answered Commander Boyd. “And one we have been asking ourselves a lot in recent months.”

  “Is it not your job to provide answers?” asked Higgins.

  “That’s correct,” replied Boyd stiffly.

  “Well, you seem to be doing the opposite right now.”

  Daly watched the commander falter, anger flaring his nostrils. In a way, he felt sorry for Boyd, doing his paperwork every day, issuing new directives from headquarters, trying to keep in touch with what Special Branch officers were up to, and even interfere in what some of his detectives were doing. Telling himself that after ten years or so of shuffling papers he might be promoted back to the city, with perhaps an MBE as a glittering prize in sight. Getting heckled by Republican politicians was not part of his career plan.

  Daly cleared his throat. “Police forces have their strategies and budgets. We have to reach targets for vehicle crime, street crime, and burglary, and that is where the resources go, but I think we need to realize that human trafficking is a problem that is sneaking up on us.”

  “How many people traffickers have your arrested in the past year?” asked Mooney.

  Daly shrugged and tried to be honest. “None. Yet. You have to remember we’re groping in the dark through a maze of cross-border roads and hideouts. Dissident Republicans, people traffickers, drug smugglers, fuel smugglers, cigarette smugglers, there’s a hundred different types of criminal out there running in different directions. But we struggle on, doing the best we can.”

  Susie Brooke nodded. “This is a very new environment for the police: tackling international crime while dealing appropriately with foreign nationals; tackling racism in all its forms, especially the more covert forms such as institutional racism.” She glanced at Daly. “I think as police officers we need a new kind of training and a new set of experiences to make us more effective.”

  The meeting progressed for another half an hour, discussing strategies to help the police reach out to the new arrivals from Eastern Europe. They decided to start with a mail drop to every house in the district with information about police services printed in different languages.

  When it was over, Brooke came over and sat down beside Daly.

  “I know why Lena Novak ran away from you.”

  He twisted in his chair. “Why?”

  “She doesn’t trust you. Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Why shouldn’t she trust me? I saved her from a man who was about to kidnap her.”

  “There’s no simple answer to that, but it’s a question you can’t ignore.”

  “Why don’t you try giving me an answer then?”

  She stared at him. “One aspect of her distrust is based on the fact that you’re a man.”

  “And how do I resolve that?”

  “You have to understand her world. All she sees are enemies, dangerous men who might do her harm. Try to imagine what it’s like being in her shoes.”

  Daly was tired. He had a slight headache. If he was honest, he had let Lena slip out of his grasp in the clumsiest way possible, not once, but twice. Deep down, he blamed himself for not arresting her on the night they first met in the abandoned farmhouse. If anything, he had been too tentative, too interested in understanding her world. He looked at Brooke.

  She smiled and tipped her head slightly to one side. “Perhaps we should talk about this later.”

  “I agree.”

  “What about Hegarty’s tonight? I’m heading there for a drink and a dance with some girlfriends.”

  He was taken aback by the sudden invitation. “Sure.”

  When she got up and left, Daly found himself staring across the table at Higgins and Mooney. The two Republicans exchanged meaningful glances.

  “How do you get a date with a woman like that?” asked Higgins.

  “Now you’re asking a good question.” Mooney nodded his head. “We’d all like to hear the answer to that one.”

  Daly felt the back of his neck turn red as they laughed.

  27

  Daly had decided to decline Brooke’s invitation and head for home when he bumped into Irwin in the car park. The younger detective looked uncharacteristically deflated, like the captain of a football team that had lost a dozen games on the trot.

  “I need a drink. Want to join me?” he asked bluntly.

  Daly thought for a moment. It struck him as unusual that the Special Branch detective was leaving the police station at this late hour of the day.

  “I’ve something to get off my chest,” added Irwin, a note of desperation creeping into his voice.

  On closer inspection, the Special Branch detective looked a mess. His dark hair was disheveled and his shirt rumpled. Several days’ worth of stubble and a pair of sleepless-looking eyes had done dark things to his face. It occurred to Daly he might kill two birds with one stone and take Brooke up on her invite after all.

  “Fancy Hegarty’s then?”

  Irwin shrugged his shoulders. “As good a place as any.”

  “Should I bring the hankies?”

  “I don’t need any fuckin’ hankies.” Irwin’s tone was defensive.

  Outside the pub, a row of bouncers stood guard over the closed doors. They had just turned away a group of Eastern European youths dressed in T-shirts and jeans. The young men huddled together in the shadows with the look of those condemned always to wait on the wrong side of closed doors. One of them glanced up as the two detectives passed. Daly watched the yellow streetlights glinting in his eyes before the darkness hooded his face.

  Grinning and nodding, the bouncers stepped aside and ushered the detectives through.

  Once they had settled into a snug, Daly asked Irwin if it was part of Hegarty’s door policy to bar Eastern Europeans.

  “Why not?” replied Irwin. “Isn’t that the whole point of a door policy—to discriminate?” He got up to order the first round.
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br />   “We should be doing something about it,” said Daly when Irwin returned with two pints of Guinness, their creamy heads spilling enticingly over the top.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Tell our antiracism officer about it, for a start.”

  Irwin snorted. “And what will she do? Send in an undercover team of Lithuanian policemen to entrap the bouncers?”

  “Fair enough. Forget it.”

  “Targeting those bouncers and their racist door policy isn’t going to solve anything. Anyway, it’s not just Eastern Europeans they bar. If a group of Eskimos came up to the door, they’d probably turn them away, as well.”

  “I just don’t like seeing it happen before my eyes.”

  “Whether you like it or not, people will always want to drink and party with their own. It’s a fact the world over. Russians, Chinese, Africans, we’re all the same.”

  “I don’t see the bouncers turning away Eastern European girls.”

  Irwin’s eyes glinted. “Even bouncers can forget their principles.”

  They were halfway through their third round of Guinness when Irwin came round to mentioning what was troubling him.

  “I thought about quitting today,” he confided in Daly, his voice raw. “I’m going to talk to the chief. It’s the hours and the security threat. I don’t mind, but it plays havoc with your personal life.”

  As far as Daly knew, Irwin had a healthy and colorful personal life, a pulsating soap opera of romantic conquests, furtive betrayals, fights, and makeups, involving his girlfriend, Poppy, and a cast of about half a dozen other women, most of them colleagues.

  “It’s Poppy.” Irwin shook his head. His eyes grew watery. “She’s kicked me out. I think it’s for good this time.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I asked her how serious this was on a scale of one to ten. She said eleven. I’ve hardly eaten since.”

  Daly nodded.

  “It’s not what you think. We were in love. I was going to get her an engagement ring.”

  “What about the other girls?”

  “Poppy was different. I thought we were going to be together forever.”

  That was what I thought about Anna, even a year ago, mused Daly.

  Irwin stared at his pint and swirled it sorrowfully, as though he were working out how the drink and he were going to manage in the big bad world without his girlfriend. He hugged the pint to his chest before placing it dejectedly on the table.

  A waitress came to collect the empty drinks, but Irwin waved her away. He finished the dregs, wiping his lips as if too much had spilled from there already.

  “She wasn’t like the others,” he said eventually. He barely glanced in Daly’s direction. “That’s the truth.” Then he went back to the bar.

  He returned with two fresh pints and several bags of crisps.

  “It’s not worth it, this job,” he declared. “When it drives a wedge between you and your loved ones.”

  Daly decided to play devil’s advocate.

  “How do you think giving up your job will change things with Poppy?”

  Irwin gulped down a mouthful and shrugged. “You’re probably right. It’s too late for that.”

  Daly remained silent. He felt a disabling echo of his own loss. He tasted once again the familiar pangs of separation, the desire to have his married life with Anna restored, the life they had enjoyed before the accident. He glanced at the younger detective and felt a twinge of empathy. It was an odd feeling. As though the circuitry of his emotions had gone awry, the polar forces reversed. He never imagined he might feel anything in common with Irwin, let alone sympathize with his predicament.

  “We’re all under pressure in the force these days,” Daly said, sighing. “And everyone fears deep down that they’re about to be blown up by terrorists.”

  “Bloody Republican dissidents. It’s like the transfer window in the football league out there. They’re bringing in a whole team of new signings from the IRA and the INLA.”

  They raised their pints of Guinness in mock salute to each other and drank deeply. The creamy heads slopped back to the bottom of the empty glasses.

  “I don’t mean to make light of your problems,” said Daly after a pause. “I’m just suggesting you shouldn’t lose your sense of proportion. You’re letting your emotions interfere with your career.”

  Irwin responded to Daly’s sympathy by opening up further. He recounted in detail how he had spent the last week trawling the Internet for dates. Daly listened, suspecting the real purpose behind the younger detective’s frenzied search for romance was to prevent even a moment of silent reflection creeping into his life.

  “It’s impossible to judge how a woman looks from a photo on the Internet,” complained Irwin, his face registering the memory of his disappointment. “This new woman I met online, she posted two pictures of herself. One was terrible. The other not so bad. I arranged to meet her for a date. I thought if she was somewhere in between . . .” His voice trailed off. The dance floor was beginning to fill with bodies. He stared longingly at the moving crowd, as though it were a train he had just missed, a train that would whisk him away from loneliness.

  He picked up the thread of the story again, glancing back at Daly with a look of reproach. “Turned out, even the terrible photo of her was flattering.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I escaped to the nearest pub after half an hour, but then she texted to say how much she had enjoyed the date. I texted back likewise, but shame about the chemistry. Then she said she thought the chemistry had been great. So I switched off the phone and hit the bar.”

  Daly nodded. He wanted to say a few words, but could not think of anything that would extract the sting of disappointment from Irwin’s face. On the dance floor a mixed barrage of drunken businessmen and muscled builders were launching themselves onto the circulating groups of women.

  “Thanks for humoring me.”

  “Humoring you? I meant to do the opposite.”

  Irwin grinned suddenly.

  “At least you can still see the funny side,” said Daly.

  Irwin stared at his glass. “At least I’m drunk.”

  A group of women, who had been sitting at a nearby table, moved closer. Irwin went to the toilet, returned, and said nothing. After his brief outpouring of emotion, he drew a gloomy mantle of suffering around himself. He sipped the froth of his pint and smacked his lips deliberately, trying to keep his deck of troubles a little closer to his chest. The woman at the nearby table laughed at a private joke, and Irwin glanced uncertainly at them. He raked his hand through his curly hair, looked at them again, and gulped down his drink. He edged a little closer to the women, as though he were keen to share the joke.

  Daly was about to advise Irwin to go home and tell his girlfriend he still loved her and that she was too good for him. However, a change had overcome Irwin. The oldest of the women flashed a smile in his direction. Love was in the air, or at least lust, as Irwin blinked and grinned. He was like a thief, thought Daly, newly released from prison, who comes across a wallet on the pavement. Just as in crime, sex was always more about opportunity than motivation. Irwin went up to the bar and nerved himself with a double whiskey.

  Daly surveyed the women. The oldest had bleached blond hair and heavy makeup, designed more to cover the signs of age rather than enhance the freshness of youth. All three women were ogling Irwin now, islanded in a sea of knowing sexual energy, urging him to draw closer as he returned unsteadily from the bar. Something about the directness of their invitation convinced Daly they were foreign. Local women would have feigned disinterest for longer, playing out a charade of boredom until their target had drunk himself into an inebriated stupor.

  Irwin gulped down the remainder of his pint, leaned over to the women, and introduced himself. Hi
s face glistened with sweat. He beckoned Daly over, and soon the older detective found himself exchanging meaningless pleasantries with the women, who were all from Poland. They claimed to be sisters, but Daly had the suspicion that at least two, if not three, generations were represented in their company.

  The disco started, and the pub began to shake with the reverberations of the music. Irwin rose to the floor with the eldest of the women and began dancing as proudly as a strutting cock. After a few songs, he sat down beside Daly again.

  “She tells me she’s forty,” he said. “I think she’s having me on. What do you think?”

  “Give or take a few years—what’s the difference?” It was the most comforting thing Daly could think of saying. Truthfully, he suspected she might be the youngest woman’s grandmother.

  Irwin rubbed his face. “At least I’ve moved off the Internet and into the real world.” His eyes blazed with a sudden lack of caution, his mind already inhabiting the reduced reality and raised hopes of the intoxicated. His tactics had changed but the scope for deception was still as great, thought Daly, as he rose to his feet. It was the easiest parting from company he had made in a long time.

  28

  Daly avoided the swell of people pushing onto the dance floor and forced his way to the bar. From what he could see, it was less a disco than an exploration of how far drunken men could be teased. He scanned the crowd, looking for Susie Brooke, but there was no sign of his colleague.

  One of the younger Polish women appeared out of the sweating throng and sidled up to him.

  “Your friend, he’s funny,” she said, smiling. “A typical Irishman.”

  “Don’t call him that,” said Daly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He thinks he’s British.”

  “What about you? Are you Irish?”

  “Yes.”